1 2 NAVIGATING COOK 3 APRIL 26TH TO MAY 23RD 2020 Navigating Cook is held at Michael Reid Sydney in Nici Cumpston Sir Joseph Banks and Dr Daniel Solander conjunction with Hordern House, rare book dealers. Baden Croft Robert Benard after Captain James Cook Anne McCormick and Derek McDonnell, the directors of Hordern House are among the world’s foremost Lucy Dyson John and William Cary authorities in the books, maps, globes and materials Marc Etherington Captain James Cook associated with early exploration and travel. The Rew Hanks Captain James Cook and Charles Green scholarly depth and material riches to be uncovered by Hordern House within Navigating Cook anchor the Derek Henderson J. Cheevers, after Captain James Cook genesis of the Cook myth. Significant contemporary Alesandro Ljubicic Nathaniel Dance (engraved by F. Bartolozzi) Australian and New Zealand Artists then clearly chart Robert Malherbe Nathaniel Dance (engraved by John Keyes Sherwin) the changing attitudes to Cook’s first contact. Joseph McGlennon John Hawkesworth Paul Nabulumo Namarinjmak James Magra Kathleen Nanima Rambler Lewis Pingo Jordan Richardson Alexander Shaw Joan Ross Sarah Stone Trevor Smith Dr. Christian Thompson AO Wayne Youle Cover: Dr Christian Thompson AO Museum of Others (Othering the Explorer, James Cook), 2016 4 FOREWORD FOREWORD 5 Michael Reid OAM & Toby Meagher Derek McDonnell & Anne McCormick We filter and cherry-pick history in order to make our “Common Friends To Mankind” of other European explorers, we might argue that the national myths, according to the myths we believe And the legacy of Captain James Cook, Fellow of the approach of Cook was considerably milder and more need making. In the 18th Century, the narrative, Royal Society, (1728-1779) is what exactly? Myths During the American War of Independence, Benjamin humane. There were episodes of violence, of course, story and myth of Captain Cook was that of a stern constantly shift and are reformed in order to make Franklin instructed captains at sea that, should they starting infamously with the landing at Poverty explorer, a Quaker, navigator, cartographer and a better understanding of our times, specifically for come into contact with Cook’s vessel, they must “not Bay, when the British fired on the Māori with fatal courageous sea captain who lead his men in adverse our purposes. Navigating Cook, navigates the shifting consider her an enemy, nor suffer any plunder to be consequences, and essentially finishing with Cook’s conditions to chart almost a third of the globe. His myth of Cook. Art has always been at the heart of made of the effects contained in her, nor obstruct death at Kealakekua Bay. But we should remember achievements and legacy for many hundreds of years mythmaking. Such was the role of the 18th Century her immediate return to England by detaining her the extent of the three voyages, at sea for altogether were viewed exclusively through the lens of scientific Artist to build the myth of Cook, so too, is it the role or sending her into any other part of Europe or to 122 of the 146 months from the departure of the first and geographical knowledge- lightly coloured by a hew of the contemporary Artist to interrogate it. Myth- America; but that you treat the said Captain Cook and voyage to the return of the third. The few episodes of authoritarian cold. making is never fixed; it must chart a course for new his people with all civility and kindness… as common of conflict during that time demonstrate Cook’s horizons on ever-shifting seas. friends to mankind”. usually diplomatic and humane approach. We would Over the first twenty years of the 21st Century do well to remember that he was an explorer, and the established euro-centric view of Cook has been Common friends to mankind they were: though in a hardly deserves the blame for colonial atrocities in reviewed, revised and recalibrated with the lens of more nuanced age, and since the effects of original which he has sometimes been implicated in recent scrutiny, honing in on the 28th April 1770, and Cook’s European discovery morphed into colonisation, years. A fairer case could be made against English first contact with the Gweagal people of the Eora colonialism and beyond, things are more complicated. officers and early governors over the later period nation. First contact began as a standoff and ended A quarter of a millennium after Cook the effects of the of European expansion for callous and, sometimes, as a skirmish. Eschewing the stance of Quakers; the European discoveries are still playing out. Relations genocidal cruelty, than against Cook for the crimes of first blow shall not be theirs; Cook is recorded to have between Māori and Pākehā, between European his successors. fired twice on the Gweagal warriors. Once, between settlers and the Aboriginal population of Australia, two warriors, with a musket. A stone is then known to between native Hawaiians and Haole, remain complex Cook set himself the task of sailing “as far as I think have been returned from the shore. Cook fired again, despite long-running attempts at reconciliation, it possible for man to go”, an ambition perhaps with second small shot musket aimed at the legs of an some better envisaged than others, and shifting with deliberately echoed in the exhortation two centuries older, presumably senior warrior. Shots having been fluctuating attitudes and approaches to the intricate later to “boldly go where no man has gone before”; fired, troops then landed, and so began the relentless and enormous issues involved. his great descendants at NASA demonstrated their march of guns, germs and steel that disposed of debt by naming the space shuttle Endeavour. Cook’s people. In the context of the frequently aggressive behaviours discoveries pepper, essentially create, the map of 6 7 the Pacific north and south. He reached further into All right-thinking people acknowledge the traditional the Antarctic circle than any other voyager would for owners of every land upon which Cook touched, 140 years. He brought scientific method to bear on though he was not a coloniser but an explorer. Change the process of voyages of discovery; he searched for was inevitable as the far-flung parts of the world the southern continent and discovered its absence. became known to each other, but where colonisation He was responsible for the European discovery of by Europeans eventuated, it happened later, carried the eastern extremities of Australia, the Hawaiian out by other agencies; where it was based on Islands, and many points in between. His numerous knowledge of his discoveries, it was never he that remarkable feats of seamanship included saving ordained it or carried it out. In an operatic sense, Endeavour inside the Barrier Reef, and navigating however, it was as though he paid the price in advance: its treacherous inner waters; his humane treatment having revisited the Hawaiian Islands and observing of his company was not limited to his effective the extraordinary ritual and power of its Indigenous conquering of the scurvy curse, but extended to his People, he died there. Parallels abound, with both decent behaviour in command, and a fair treatment of Christian notions of sacrifice, and with traditional others evident in his honest journals. Hawaiian beliefs in Lono and the ritual related to the return of the god. Cook carried out careful, skillful, extensive charting wherever he went. The way that marine charts continue to be constructed, even today with electronic charting, is such that original discoveries remain on the map for as long as no correction is required by subsequent observation. To see how much of Cook’s charting remains as gospel puts us in mind of Christopher Wren’s epitaph in St Paul’s: if it’s a monument you need, just have a look around. For Cook, just look at the charting of our world. He is joined by other great navigators but he put his mark on the map first, and there it stays. 8 NAVIGATING COOK 9 John McDonald After the bicentennial celebrations of 1970 Captain In those days we put Cook (literally) on a pedestal. sockets. The portrait is held, in mock echo of the way It’s absurd, but the Australiana is not entirely Cook’s place seemed assured as one of the indelible Nowadays we are more inclined to sympathise with the those Eora warriors who met Cook might have held inappropriate. One of the sources of Cook’s appeal to heroes of Australian history, but by the turn of the indigenous view, that it was impossible to “discover” their shields, seeking protection from the objectifying those late 19th century colonial patriots was the sense century he was becoming known as a villain. While an a country that had been inhabited for thousands of gaze of the explorers. Through the artist’s eyes that that he was himself an Australian avant la lettre. This earlier generation built idols to Cook and worshipped years, let alone “take possession” by the mere raising gaze is turned back on the landing party. Thompson was because of his background as the son of a farm at their feet, today those same monuments are likely of a flag. Cook was now viewed as a harbinger of doom, aims to appropriate the imperial overview that looked labourer who rose to become a captain in the King’s to be found besmirched by paint and slogans. an agent of imperialism who opened the door to the upon the peoples of the Pacific as exotic savages. On Navy through his own diligence and hard work. To invasion that would commence in 1788. To take but one the shores of Botany Bay it could just as easily be those men of colonial high society, who had come from Although he was barely mentioned during the first example of the new contempt for the great navigator, argued that it was Cook and his men who were the working class or even convict backgrounds, Cook’s hundred years of the colony, in the years leading up think of Daniel Boyd’s No Beard paintings, of 2007- exotic ones.